Call for Ideas: Rethinking the Grid of Manhattan

In 2011 it's been 200 years since New York City got it's grid iron pattern streets. And since then it has been treated as one of the greatest working street patterns. It served many people in many different ways with amazing flexibility accommodating different architecture and planning in times and inspired many designs around it.

The Architectural League of NY in partnership with the Museum of the City of New York have been launched an open international idea competition titled "The Greatest Grid" invites architects, landscape architects, urban designers, and other design professionals around the world to use the Manhattan street grid as a catalyst for thinking about the present and future of New York. Given its capacity for reinvention, how might the Manhattan grid continue to adapt and respond to the challenges and opportunities–both large and small–that New York faces now and into the future?

The ChallengesThe challenge is to deal with a lot of questions; what challenges and possibilities face the city today and how might innovative solutions emerge out of (and in turn modify) the existing street grid? What other possibilities exist for rethinking streets that might either increase public space or encourage new kinds of uses? What new infrastructures will the city require–or what existing infrastructures might be rethought–and what impact will they have on the grid?... and continues.

PossibilitiesThe submissions may be practical or visionary, large scale or small, it may be a proposal of new formation of the grid, small infills, possible changes in the existing buildings, suggesting new typology of buildings, it may be a work done on the whole grid or part of it, the options are basically open.

Deadline: September 26, 2011Awards: Up to ten submissions will be chosen by the jury for exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York. The selected teams will receive an honorarium of $1,000 each. Winners will be announced in mid-October.Submission: Digital in PDF formatEligibility: Open to all architects, urban designers, landscape architects, and all other design professionals from any country. Students are ineligible for participation.Entry Fee: A 25 $ USD online donation payable via credit cards.Download: Call for Idea PDF